


Shorts of All Colors

by IntuitivelyFortuitous



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, McSpirk - Freeform, Mentions of Blood, Prompt Fill, bones is a badass, mckirk - Freeform, spones - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-10-30 14:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10878660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntuitivelyFortuitous/pseuds/IntuitivelyFortuitous
Summary: A few mini fics written for my tumblr account RegulationBlues. Some of these got a bit long so I decided to put them all here.Recently added:5/18 - chapter 65/15 - chapter 55/11 - chapters 1-4





	1. Spones: I need a(nother) drink for this.

**Author's Note:**

> For ilovetinycreatures, 
> 
> Spones based on the prompt "I need a drink for this". 
> 
> Warnings for: implied/referenced sex

Jim was still in bed when he broke in, hangover hypo in hand. Leonard made no attempt to be quiet. He entered his medical override code, stomped towards the bed, and nailed Jim before he could open his eyes.

“Nngh? Wassat? Bones?”

Jim came back to sobriety reluctantly. It was a mercy, getting rid of the headache he would’ve been greeted with upon waking. Leonard felt his own head throb in time with his heartbeat. Surprisingly, a negligible portion was from whiskey. He threw a gold shirt at a yawning Jim and sat down hard on the pillow.

“Hey,” came the weak protest.

“I need a drink,” he said, rubbing his eyes.”Oh, god.”

“Didn’t you have enough last night?”

“Oh, I had plenty.”

Jim, who had accepted the shirt, paused with his head halfway inside his left sleeve. “Whose bed did you wake up in this morning?” he asked.

“Now what the hell made you come up with that?” Leonard snapped.

“Shit. It was Spock, wasn’t it?”

“Yep.” All fight left him with a sigh.

Jim shoved his head the rest of the way through the neck of his shirt. His eyes were wide. “You didn’t leave him there, did you?”

“God no, Jim what kind of a man do you take me for?”

“Then he left you,” Jim guessed. He rummaged around in a drawer for socks, shooting occasional worried glances back at his friend. He was probably wondering just how shitfaced Leonard still was. The answer: scrambled from last night’s impromptu mind meld, but not at all drunk.

He shrugged. “Not…in the way I would have expected from a drunken one-night stand, no.”

“What? “ Jim said. “Then what’s your problem?”

Leonard swallowed and toyed with a frayed sleeve. “Remember that lecture I gave you on Vulcan metabolism after you tried to feed him raktajino?”

Jim froze halfway in the middle of putting his sock on. “Vulcans can’t get drunk,” he said. “ _Shit_.”

“Not off of what you and I do, for sure.”

“And there was no chocolate there?”

“Okay, first of all, that’s a myth. And no, there wasn’t.”

“So when he slept with you…he did, right?”

Leonard laughed bitterly into his hands. “Yeah, he did.” Oh, did he ever. An unwanted but not unpleasant memory of tracing the lines of Spock’s torso with his palm invaded his thoughts. He took a gulp of the water on Jim’s nightstand to wash it away.

Jim ran a hand through his hair and patted out the wrinkles in his uniform. “You wanna elaborate on ‘not in the way you expected’, Bones?”

As bad as he was at actually talking about his problems, Jim was an excellent listener. Leonard didn’t actually have to articulate what half of the issue was, Jim would sniff it out no matter how hard he tried to obscure it. That talent could sure be a pain in the ass at times, but for once he appreciated it. When he didn’t get an answer right away, he raised his eyebrows in a way that would rival Spock.

Leonard searched for a way to describe it that didn’t sound, well, romantic. Because it had definitely been romantic. “He kissed me,” he sighed.

Jim sat on next to him on the bed. His face was stupidly concerned.

“He didn’t even argue with me. I was expecting him to say nothing, to just get up and leave, maybe before I woke up, but he didn’t.” Spock woke him up with a kiss, long and sweet, and said nothing else before he left his quarters. What was he supposed to make of that? Except…well, the obvious.

“Shouldn’t you be happy?” Jim asked.

“I am,” he said. He’d just never expected it to happen like _this_.

Jim stood. “Alright. As captain, I’m giving you the afternoon off today. _Don’t_ argue. And don’t screw it up, alright?”

He shook his head. Don’t pretend to be a Vulcan by hiding your feelings. Right. “Thanks, Jim.”

“My pleasure. Or Spock’s, in this case.”


	2. Mcspirk: To Jim's surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Urbanspaceman (TAFKAB):
> 
> Mcspirk, Jim catching Bones and Spock in the act.

There’s a state that he reaches where he’s so sleep deprived that words swim together on the pages of his reports and he feels like he’s walking through lead when he gets up to refill his coffee. He can’t tell if things are actually happening or completely formulated by his mind, but the only thing he needs to worry about is blips on Chekov’s monitor so it’s not as frightening as it sounds. But thanks to that shore leave, the one where anyone’s thoughts would appear in the air before them, he’s been more on edge.  Sometimes, during late nights on the border of the neutral zone, it seemed like the experience was repeating itself, and unfortunately for him, his mind was  _always_ wandering. He questioned himself when a flower appears on the bridge. Was it one of Sulu’s? Or something his mind put there? Harmless thoughts. It only gets a little awkward when something happens like…

Well. Like this.

Like seeing Bones pressed against the wall by his first officer, their hair in disarray, hands wandering. Jim stood at the end of a corridor near medical, unsure why he was there, hand loosely clutching a coffee cup he stole from the dining area. Two reports that he needed to read were folded and tucked into the side of his pants. He hadn’t slept in 51 hours. Neither had they, he was pretty sure, because there’s no way they would have so little discretion under any other circumstances. Either that or it was the first time they’d done this, but there was no way that Bones hadn’t practiced peeling off Spock’s blue science uniform.

Damn. _Damn,_ that had to be a hallucination; the way Spock mouthed McCoy’s neck was definitely something from his dreams.  Bones squirmed and moaned, fingers clutching at thermal black underclothes. Jim was content to watch _that_ show. His eyes widened when Spock’s dexterous hands reached for his CMO’s zipper. There was a high keening sound that he realized was coming from himself in just enough time to cover it with a cough. The three of them froze.

Bones looked up, saw who it was, and groaned. There was no preserving his dignity now. He buried his face in Spock’s shoulder as if it would make Jim go away. It wouldn’t. Spock was giving him a look that plainly conveyed “are you going to comment or am I going to have to formally greet you?”

Jim chose comment.

“Well,” he said, grinning, his voice a little gruffer than was probably socially acceptable, “this is awkward.”

“Jesus, Jim, go away,” Bones said, refusing to show his face. His ears were bright red in a way Jim had never seen before and it was _delightful._

“Oh don’t mind me,” he said, not moving an inch. “Carry on.”


	3. Spones: Is that my shirt?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Spones-in-my-bones
> 
> Spones and is that my shirt. Of course, I added an angst twist, so beware

Christine waved the tricorder over another stack of books. Each one, every page. The only person who had ever touched them was Spock. And yet, no Spock was here. She turned to Leonard and shook her head. He couldn’t help but be a little bit angry. Not at her, of course. Not really. He was angry at whoever had done this.

“Good work. It’s getting late, Chris. Take a break.”

“Not while you’re still here,” she said, her voice muffled by a thin drape of Vulcan cloth between them. “I’m not letting you do this alone, Leonard.”

Well, they’d be here for a while, then. “Why don’t you get the drawers?” he said. “I’ll take the closet.”

“You think that’s necessary?” she asked, looking a little guilty as she slid the first open. Perfectly pressed Starfleet issued thermal gear. Everything in here was perfect.

“Anything out of the ordinary, Chris. Anything at all.”

He turned back to his task, scanning every pocket and crevice for some clue to explain where Spock was now. All they had found was a speck of blood in the transporter room. So, as usual, it was up to medical to handle only residual signs of the patients they once had. Leonard slid open the closet door. Spock certainly had an impressive wardrobe. For any other officer it would have been frivolous, but Spock was an ambassador’s son. He needed apparel for interacting with nearly every kind of culture. One still had DNA traces of his father on the sleeve, but it was far too faded to be within the year. He silenced the tricorder’s beeping along with Christine’s hopeful look. The next was a dark robe of a fine silken material that he couldn’t remember Spock ever wearing. He scanned it. Nothing.

Christine’s tricorder wailed. “Old reading,” she said, inspecting it anyway.

He let out a breath that was equal parts relief and frustration. He should really program them to respond only with a visual message when the reading was more than six months old. Of course, they were probably investigating a dead end anyway. Maybe Spock had just left.

“Leonard,” she interrupted, stepping back.

He spun around. “What?”

“I…oh, dear.” She covered her mouth with a hand, delicate pink fingernails glinting.

He joined her cautiously in front of the dresser.  She had piled a stack of already examined shirts on the bed. Left in the drawer was a lump of blue tucked in a corner. Insignificant. It was smaller, though, and there was a burn on the side that he faintly remembered.

“Is that my shirt?” his voice sounded loud to his ears. He reached for it. It felt like his shirt, but there was no way.

Leonard flipped the badge over in his hands. It _was_ Medical. It was his size. And given by the pained expression Chris sported, it was his DNA, too. And there was a tear right where he had gotten shot on a landing party months ago, right above where his heart would have been. Spock had one of his shirts. It could’ve been by mistake, except Spock didn’t make mistakes.

“Do you,” he cleared his throat uselessly. The lump didn’t leave. “Do you think…”

“He did,” she answered.

The bed dipped as she sat beside him, although he couldn’t remember sitting down. Why had Spock never told him? Leonard stared at the blurring blue fabric, knuckles white. His eyes burned with the effort of banishing tears. Chris put her arms around his shoulders and he was thankful it was only her that would see him like this.

“We’ll find him,” she said.

He believed her.


	4. Spones: He's mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Camshaft22, who asked for 
> 
> Spones, "he's mine, I don't share."
> 
> Warnings: blood, combat. Some klingons get slammed.

Oaths were broken. All the time, every day. The rules that applied on Earth didn’t necessarily hold in the vacuum of space. Leonard swore once to do no harm. He broke that oath and he’d do it again. The phaser in his hands was cold. This one had never been fired until minutes ago. He could picture heat boiling from the inside, ready to claim them all, but he held it fast. Rare were the times when he was thankful for his Starfleet combat training.

One Klingon went down in a flash of orange light. He leaped over the scorch marks on the deck, feet making clangs loud enough to bring the rest of their assault party down on his head. His breath was heavy, chest aching with every exhale, but he couldn’t stop.

“McCoy to Kirk,” he said to his communicator, reluctant to take his hand from the phaser. “Jim, dammit!”

The wall intercom would have been a great asset if it still worked. He cursed. Jim would have been on the bridge with security officers on standby, uut Spock was unprotected in the science labs. He bit his lip. If the bridge needed him…but the Klingons were after an artifact, and that would’ve been in Spock’s possession.

The communicator crackled. “Doctor? This is Uhura. Come in.”

“Nyota? What’s your status?”

White noise drifted out. He had to strain his ears to hear anything at all.

“I can’t hear you!” Leonard fiddled desperately with the dial, but it was something on her end that made the next message come through clear.

“The Captain, Mr. Chekov, and I have been beamed down to the planet by unknown persons. We have reason to believe they’re after the artifact we—”

“Yeah, I figured that one out already. Do you have a plan?”

He could almost hear her bitterness from the weak connection. “The longer it takes them to get the artifact, the longer we have until they decide what to do with us, doctor,” she said.

“You got it.”

Excellent. Justified reason to go down to the science labs. He dashed toward the turbolift, thought twice, and found a Jefferies tube instead. It would be a tight squeeze, but it would take him right to the medical storage wing. He could use a tricorder right about now, anyway. Forcing his breath into a regular pattern, he grabbed the ladder and slung his way down, daring enough to take several rungs at a time. Pressure closed in around him as he went deeper. It wasn’t his imagination, either. Gravity systems were always a little off in what Scotty called “the lady’s arteries”. He’d probably have nightmares about how the many ways he could die doing so later when adrenaline wasn’t pumping through his veins. 

Leonard landed hard on solid ground and heaved out a sigh. The end of the tube would come out right under a spare bed. He stuck his head out, relieved when only the darkness greeted him. The tricorder boxes were a few feet away. He grabbed one and trusted his memory of the area to guide him without a light. The spare equipment only tripped him twice.

Something metal dropped to the ground in front of him. He couldn’t see the back of his hand much less potential enemies. Another clang, and glass breaking. He let out a breath—there was no glass in this part of the room. He was at the end, at a door right outside the science labs. Now to hope that no Klingon decided to open it.

The tricorder he had just opened whirred an initiation sequence. He covered it with both hands, hoping to muffle the sound. The lights flashed red and blue and finally illuminated the wall, but he wanted to know what was on the other side. One dial turned, another switch flicked, and the machine was set on long range mode. Leonard held it up to the wall. Cold was starting to seep in through his surgery scrubs. He had almost forgotten where he was when this all started: in surgery on a young woman from engineering. He was now drenched in red and pinkish blood. Some was from people he had killed, but he didn’t want to think about that just yet. It would make him nauseous. The tricorder beeped again and he winced. Thank god Klingons weren’t known for their good hearing.

The vitals of two figures directly on the other side of the wall appeared, and three more father back. One of them was Vulcan, one was human. He let out a breath. If he was fast, he could take the two closest and retreat to get a better advantage.  The floor vibrated with the force of their footsteps. Best scenario was three against three, assuming that Spock and the unlucky ensign weren’t out of commission.

The count of three resounded in his head. Just as the tricorder showed that they had turned their backs he pushed the door open. Blinding pale light filtered in, but the shapes of two huge dark creatures were easy enough to make out. Leonard forced his eyes to remain open as he fired one shot, disintegrating the arm of the one nearest to him _._ He managed another phaser beam to the heart before a roar and a clang in the door next to him sent him scrambling back, shoving the door shut, and locking it from the inside. He was immersed in darkness yet again. _Damn._ He should’ve paid more attention in firearms simulators. He activated the tricorder. The other one would be firing on the lock on the door right about now, so he hid behind the nearest boxes. The door exploded open. Leonard held the tricorder out straight in front of him. Hesitant footsteps told him what it could not: that the Klingon couldn’t see him. Good, since his medical equipment could see just fine.

As the quiet growling and lumbering footsteps drew closer, Leonard kneeled. The phaser was tucked neatly against his stomach, pointing outward alongside the tricorder. When that horrid beeping that he had cursed earlier alerted him to something directly in front of the boxes, he waited half a second before unloading the phaserbanks through the cardboard. _Take that, bastard._ Red streaks lit the darkness and burned their outline into the back of his eyelids. No sound. If that man hadn’t been vaporized, he’d eat his hat.

No time for relief yet, though. There was one more, the one nearest to Spock. He checked the phaser’s settings: still on high. No stun beam was enough to pierce their armor. The tricorder told him that the three figures were in a semi-triangular formation, Spock the farthest from him, the human on the other side of the Klingon. They must have been incapacitated if he let a human get behind him. Leonard just hoped they’d still be alive by the time he got to them.

There was no door to open this time. Artificial light was pouring freely into the room. He let he eyes adjust for a moment before peeking out. The Klingon had his back to the far wall, weapon pointed at Spock. Glass was scattered across the floor, beakers smashed and windows shattered. Twisted metal that had once been a microscope lay on the floor. Half of the wall had been destroyed. He couldn’t see the ensign, but there were worrying splashes of red on the ground.

Leonard could tell by the tilt of Spock’s head that he knew someone was there. And so did the Klingon, apparently. The wall next to his head exploded in sparks. He ducked away, into the hall where he had killed the first of Spock’s attackers. There was the sound of fists hitting flesh, and the yelp that followed was definitely Spock’s.

 _Don’t you dare,_ Leonard thought, hand tightening on the trigger. He turned around, not trusting that the he would be able to bait this one. He was going to have to go on the offensive. He rounded the corner, phaser in ready position. His mistake.

He was no seasoned fighter. He was fast and light on his feet, but his aim was quite frankly embarrassing and he was completely oblivious to tactics of any kind. Something that felt like a brick hit him across the face and he fell, phaser skittering across the aluminum flooring. He rolled with it, making distance before his vision returned in a blurry fade. The Klingon towered over him. He evaded one punch, hands raised up to his face, but the next clipped the side of his jaw. It didn’t break, but his head snapped to the side and he lost his footing. A hand closed around his throat. He tried to swallow. The dual handed knife glinted in the corner of his eye. But Klingons were known for toying with their food before they ate it, and he felt himself being lifted from the ground.

“Where is it, human?” The man’s face was wrinkled and contorted, even for is species. There was a cut on his chin that scattered blood as he spoke.

Leonard thought of telling him to shove it, but being facetious would probably just get him thrown against the wall like a rag doll. Instead he thought of his goal. Leonard couldn’t care less about the artifact.

“He’s mine,” he spat, “I don’t share.”

There was one piece of anatomy that was very similar on both of their species, and although they did a great job making armor to guard it, the angle that he held Leonard at gave him a prime shot. He drew his foot back, arms still grasping the wrist that held him aloft, and dug his toes right under the nice fancy leather crotch guard. His victim roared and released his neck to cover his damaged privates. Leonard’s knees cracked against the floor when he fell, but his hand was conveniently close to his phaser. He snarled as he sent a beam of light right into his attacker’s chest.

Finding Spock from there was only a matter of getting his legs to drag him in past the glass on the floor of the lab. There was a piece embedded in his thigh from his fall, but it wasn’t too big and he couldn’t really feel it anyway. Spock had fallen against a broken table. He lay on his back and looked unconscious, green blood seeping from a wound in his head. Unless the Klingon had broken his skull, it shouldn’t be fatal. Leonard brought out his trusty tricorder, slumping down to join the Vulcan on the debris-covered floor. He ran a hand lightly over a green, unmarred cheekbone as the tricorder reported that his skull was completely intact.

Spock’s eyelids flickered.

“Hey,” Leonard said, too relieved to lessen his touch. He didn’t even bother with using the excuse of checking the wound to run his hand through his friend’s hair.

When he awoke fully, Spock used Leonard’s shoulder as a handhold to stand up. It felt like they were holding each other up in equal amounts on the way to the transporter room. 


	5. GEN: Blue in Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh god. I wrote this FOREVER AGO and felt that it needed to be shown to the world. Im so sorry, but here, have an odd gen story about mccoy fishing on a random planet

\----

The one and only time that he was happy to have been put on the landing party, it felt like Georgia in the middle of summer.

It was hot and damp and Mccoy was breathing it in as if he’d never tasted oxygen before. It felt like home. Spock looked like a sugar cube about to melt, his impeccable hair plastered to his forehead by the wet air. Leonard’s own had been mussed by the wind and humidity. He felt like a boy. It was a thoroughly beautiful planet. Not one smidgen of intelligent life had been found. Clumps of green and orange moss hid grew on the trees and tiny red snails hid underneath thick bunches of grass.There were mushrooms the size of his head and ferns an uncanny purple,  but if that was the only thing that made him remember that he wasn’t on earth, he could ignore it. His boots were half-clogged in swampy water and silt.

Ahead of him a pond was lined in the sort of hollow reeds that would make it a bitch to push a canoe through. They ended a few feet out, circling a chunk of granite that hovered over the water’s edge. It looked like a damn good fishing hole. He would love nothing more than to build a fire, scare off the snakes and spiders, and sleep right there.

The beep of a scanner shocked drew his attention back to reality.

“This plant has a chemical composition that would be safe for humanoid consumption,” Spock said. His feet had sunk into a hole, but he appeared not to notice. In his hand was a beige, bulbous plant.

Leonard did a double take. “Good lord, that’s _squash._ ”

Sulu did something that Leonard didn’t ever want to describe as a giggle but could not find a word more fitting. “It’s something like it, for sure! It won’t harm the environment any if we were to harvest a third of the produce from this species. I’d say no more than two per plant. Think you can cook it up, Doctor?”

He scoffed, already grabbing for the one in Spock’s hand. “Can I? Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Another beep. “This appears to also be edible, doctor.”

“Well, I haven’t the slightest what that is, but we’ll give it a try. Sulu?”

“One per five square feet!”

“Anybody know what it is, though?” asked M’benga from his perch on a dry stump.

All three just shrugged.

Leonard grinned. If he could make a meal with entirely non-replicated foods, he would be a happy man for weeks. There was nothing like the taste of grilled sweet potato. Squash and onions, catfish and cilantro. His mouth began to water.

He squinted at the pond. It was still and calm, and there was a rock off to one edge. He had twine in his pocket…and a bit of nutrition bar…a piece of scrap metal…

“Spock, there’s a very appealing stick on that tree up there. Just the right length, see.”

The Vulcan furrowed his brow and paused for about a second (Leonard was counting). “That seems to be a very bad idea, Doctor.”

“Spock, you fetch me that stick and I will personally provide you with full access to my collection of annual science reviews.”

“That is a very convincing argument.”

“But?” Leonard asked, eyebrow raised.

“Does your collection include non-oxygenic adaptation of—”

“Annual Review of Xenogenetics, 2238. Issue three. I’ve also got Jenna Qijim’s doctorate thesis.”

“Agreed,” Spock said without hesitation.

He picked up a rock and used his frankly frustrating strength and aim to knock the branch off at the base. Leonard reached down. It was perfect, recently dead, and very long.

“Please don’t fall in,” called Sulu, who was now sitting next to M’Benga.

Leonard crept along the edge of the pond, about three hundred yards, where he could reach the outstretched rock. With three good lunges he found himself at the top, hook dangling from the rod. He stretched his arms above his head and grinned at Spock who was looking at him with some degree of second hand embarrassment. The piece of wood he was using as a bobber left little ripples across the surface. A few reeds wiggled with the waves.

And then, he got a Tug.

“Woah! Something on the line, Sulu! I knew there were fish in here!” He hefted it up and began to wind the line around his wrist. “Shit, shoulda got a little stick for this.”

M’Benga let out a little horrified noise as he hefted it out of the water.

It looked…well, kind of like a catfish, only blue and with more legs. And a tentacle. “Spock, what do you figure this is?”

“It does not look fit for humanoid consumption,” he said with the unspoken “please put it back.”

“Aw, come on! How do we know if we don’t try? Come scan it so I can put it back.” It wiggled, grasping Leonard’s forearm with what looked to be a very long fin. It was actually kind of cute, in the strange way way things like pugs and naked cats were.

Sulu splashed up behind him. “He-ey, I want one!”

“Doctor, it is indeed a poisonous life form. Please let it go.” Spock huffed a breath of irritation.

Leonard dunked it back in the water where it swam/waddled away. He was not sorry to see it go. “I’ve still got the bait on. Do we have time to try again?”

“I don’t see why not,” shrugged Sulu, “We’ve already taken the atmospheric samples the captain asked for.”

“How about,” said M’Benga,”I bring the Captain the samples he asked for so we’re not all up shit creek when we get back?”

“That would be appreciated,” Sulu said, slapping him on the shoulder. He handed over the chip from his tricorder. Spock did the same.

“Thanks, Joseph,” McCoy agreed.

“No problem, doc. Mr. Scott?” he said to his communicator. “One to beam up, please and thanks.” He disappeared with one last distasteful glance at a nearby bug.

Leonard cast his line, watching the piece of metal soar into the center of the pond.. “And… there.” The makeshift hook and the wooden bobber landed with a _plop._

The reeds knocked against each other with soft clicks and the occasional buzz of an odd red insect were all that marred the silence. Spock made so little noise that it hardly seemed like he was there, Sulu was busy smelling flowers, and now M’Benga was on the ship, probably convincing Jim to let them have the night off so they could make real live organic food. He might have even conned Scotty into letting go of some of his hooch.

Tonight, he’d make a…

_Splish._

Spock stiffened.

A ripple marred the surface of the water, and another, until the reeds were clattering like a six pack of coke on a gravel road. Leonard started seeing waves—real white caps on an acre-wide pond with barely any wind. His rock lurched.

“The hell? Is it an earthquake?”

Spock reached up and steadied him as the rock began to shake. Sulu scrambled backwards into a pile of grass and reached for his communicator.

“Scotty, lock on! We might have to have you pull us up in a hurry!”

“What’s going on down there, Sulu?”

“Haven’t got a clue! An earthquake came out of nowhere! Did you see any seismic activity on the readings?”

“Nothing! I’ve locked on. Shout and I’ve got ya!” Scotty’s voice crackled through the speaker.

Spock froze, his hand tightening on a tree to steady himself. “It would be advisable that you not move, Mr. Sulu.”

Sulu froze from where he was taking readings just as a hole opened in the ground next to him. He yelped and scrambled backwards.

“Oh no, oh no, I think now would be a good time to beam up!” he leaped backwards where Spock caught him by the arm.

“Spock?” Leonard said. His fishing line was pulled taught and his bobber had risen out of the waves. “I think I’ve got a catch.”

A bubble struggled to the surface.

“I’d move if I were you!” the pilot shouted, but not before something breached the surface of the water, churning mud and fish and algae.

Leonard dropped the fishing pole.

The pond erupted. A column of scales and flesh shook as it rose, spraying a fine mist of water. It rippled and unfolded like a fan, wings on all sides, and Leonard knew that by no laws of physics would something so large be able to lift itself from the earth with no warp drives or engines. It curled and pulsed as if gravity was no obstacle.

“Scotty,” he heard Sulu whisper, “I said _now_ would be a good time!”

The pond was empty now, a black pit that tunneled into the core of the planet. Structurally, bad idea. The rock trembled once more when the creature plunged straight for them—

 

And they materialized on the bridge of the Enterprise.

“Jesus,” Leonard sighed, “does everything always have to want to eat us?”

Sulu stumbled forward with an ear splitting grin. “Look,” he said, pointing to the viewing port. “You can still see it.”

‘It’ was coiled around the sky, a whiff of smoke underneath a thin layer of grey clouds. Ten thousand wings undulated and glimmered in the light of the sun. It was beautiful but he was very glad to no longer be within striking range.

“How do you do this?” asked Jim. “Bones, how did you manage to incite the ire of a sea monster in under fifteen minutes?”

Leonard coughed. “You have no room to talk.”

“Well, now that we’ve encountered Jörmungandr here, what do you say we get as far away from this planet as possible?” asked Sulu.

“I am unfamiliar with that term,” Spock told him.

Sulu shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Did you get the food?” Leonard asked.          

“C’mon,” he said, “I had Scotty beam it up the second we found it.

“Good work,” he said.


	6. Spones: Out of the Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilovetinycreatures asked for spones and shut up and kiss me :)

 

 

There had been absolutely no indication of what was about to happen. And Leonard watched. He tried not to look directly, it was too obvious. Spock was a smart man, he’d catch Leonard sooner or later. So he turned his attention to reflections, to the curve of wine glasses and the colors mirrored back at them from the window in the rec room. Sometimes that wasn’t sufficient, looking at Spock only when he was spoken to wasn’t quite enough, so he took his chances in between conversations. The little smiles and barely perceivable frowns were more soothing than iced sweet tea after a day of work.

He missed being able to casually pat his friend on the back or pinch him when he was being too logical. Leonard had caught himself in the turbolift with the landing party watching how the folds of Spock’s shirt fell on his angular frame. Wondering what it would feel like to rest his hand on the blue fabric between his shoulder blades and kiss the back of his neck where the severe haircut yielded to a soft sliver of skin. He had shaken himself out of his daydream so hard that his back hit the wall with a bang that sent everyone glancing at him concernedly. All he could do was pray that Spock’s telepathy didn’t work as well with proximity as it did with touch.

He had to make do with sideways glances.

They sat in the recreation deck, laughing as Jim moderated a particularly violent match of poker. Leonard had already ‘died’ and Spock had refused to play but was content to sit by and watch as it was apparently an anthropological study. Everyone was caught up in the noise and the color and the laughter. Leonard felt comfortably isolated. Eyes trained on the game but concentrated on the presence on the other side of the bench, he continued the story that he was sure nobody was listening to.

“And I told her that she could absolutely have one, but only if she didn’t tell her mother. Right before I left, I…” he glanced at Spock, sure that he’d be able to throw some insults for being ignored. Instead he found the other man sitting and listening intently. His eyes were so intense that it sent Leonard’s flight senses tingling.

“When had you planned on kissing me?” Spock asked.

Leonard choked on air and spun wildly to the side. There was _no way_ that had just heard that. It had come out of thin air. His flight senses nearly sent him out the door; he dug his fingers into the pseudo leather armrest and managed to stay seated. He couldn’t remember what he had been talking about. Was this the Vulcan version of ‘shut up and kiss me?’ yeah, right. A man could hope.

He thought about denying it. About shutting it down and walking out that door. They were in the rec room, for god’s sake, anybody could be listening. But then there would be no explanation for the sudden loss of contact in the last few months besides _dis_ like, and that was somehow much worse. It wasn’t Spock’s fault that he’d fallen in love.

“Didn’t think you wanted me to,” Leonard said instead. They were far too close. He didn’t have to reach far if he wanted to close their distance. It was an unfortunate, self-conscious distance.

He glanced at the poker match, at Christine and Nyota chatting in the corner. Feeling a little daring, he turned back to Spock. A cool hand found the back of his neck and Leonard was drawn in for an agonizingly brief but oh-so-satisfying kiss.

When he pulled away there was a cheer. He stiffened, but it was just Chekov holding Scotty’s chips aloft in triumph. Leonard slid closer to Spock so their thighs were touching and smiled into his cup.


End file.
